


exit wounds

by qwerty24



Category: The Missing (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Captivity, F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Miscarriage, Sexual Violence, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:48:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23343478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwerty24/pseuds/qwerty24
Summary: Post-series 2. Sophie and Alice try to return to their lives.But they can’t let go of each other, and the past.
Relationships: Sophie Giroux/Alice Webster
Kudos: 1





	exit wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the tags; this fic deals with what happened to Sophie and Alice in captivity.

What fragments of her history live in my body? What rooms does my blood remember?  
—Heather Christle, _The Crying Book_

* * *

“Have you been with anyone else since—” Sophie hums against Alice’s open mouth, tongue searching, battling for control.

She hadn’t meant for this to happen. But the door closed behind them, and that look on Alice’s face, longing, except they remind each other of terrible things, makes her want to have her.

Sophie doesn’t need to finish the question for Alice. Where else has she ever known sex and intimacy except for in that damp basement, padlocked steel door above her, the stench of fear?

“No,” she moans, Sophie laving at her jaw, her throat, the hollow where it meets her chest. “Have you?”

Sophie’s gaze darkens, part arousal, part self-loathing. She’ll admit to projection. She’s not shallow like that. Not after what they’ve been through. “I tried, I think, but,” she pauses for a breath, wedging her knee up between Alice’s legs, opening them. “But, I think it wasn’t what I was looking for.”

The shrink in France had called it trauma, all hushed tones and gentle eyes. It made her want to scream. _What the fuck do you know about what happened to me?_

Hypervigilant, hypersexual, afraid but throwing herself into dangerous situations, trying to fuck him out of her system. Hadn’t everything, half her life, been about getting out, out, out? About Lucy and staying alive for her?

How stupid she’d been to think that she could just shed the past like dead skin. It clung to her, a haunting. The taste of him, his cock inside her, pregnant so many times, wanting to die every time, then Lucy, the terrible realization that she would have to raise a child in that hellhole. 

“I just want to forget,” Sophie pleads, as reckless as ever, hands traveling down Alice’s body, less thin than the corpse-like girl who’d emerged from the cellar three months ago. 

She finds the waistband of Alice’s pants, tugs at the zipper, wanting her, wanting to fuck her, wanting it to be like before. Sophie slips her hand inside, finds her cotton underwear, frilly lace piping on the edges, this new person she’s become, except she knows who Alice really is, what she looks like splayed out on the cement floor, bleeding, who she was at thirteen, sixteen, twenty, the only one on this earth who’ll ever know.

Sophie curls two fingers up inside her cunt, and Alice feels that familiar, treacherous coil wind low in her stomach. She presses her thumb up against Alice’s clit, still dry, the friction like pain but something worse because she cants her hips up to fuck Sophie’s hand.

“You liked it, didn’t you, when you were with him?” she whispers cruelly against Alice’s jaw, and she hates her for it, why she can’t stop talking about what happened, can’t just let them forget, but instead she grows wet against her hand and whimpers sickly, trying but failing to bury the sound in the curve of Sophie’s throat.

Sophie laughs at her reaction, vicious, and adds another finger, twisting when she feels Alice jerk at the sharp stretch.

“I only ever think of you,” Sophie pauses, breathing heavily, the two of them still fully dressed, just her hand down the front of Alice’s pants, “and her,” she adds, the softest murmur. It makes Alice want to touch her, and she gropes around between them, finds Sophie’s breast, then the crotch of her jeans, wonders if she’s wet too, but Sophie pulls away, and stills her hand again.

“I’m sorry,” Alice preempts, cunt throbbing, willing to do anything to get her touch back.

“Don’t be,” Sophie replies, reaching out to stroke Alice’s hair even as she rocks her hips weakly, looking for Sophie’s fingers. “It’s shorter than before.” She sounds disappointed. _Before_ , as in when they were under the floorboards in the house, then the cabin, Alice locked in the closest, lower than an animal.

“Mum wanted me to cut it.” Alice tangles her hand in with Sophie’s, feels her tug gently and shivers as the tingle in her scalp shoots down her spine. Sophie remembers Alice’s mother, that other life she’d once had, and something close to jealousy rises up inside her.

“Shut up.” She pushes Alice’s head towards her and catches her mouth in a searing kiss, no gentleness anymore, teeth nipping at her lower lip, hard enough to draw blood. Alice acquiesces with a moan Sophie swallows, all frantic and tasting of strawberries, like she used to be after he would hurt her.

He would leave Alice in a crumpled mess, naked, in the cellar and bark at Sophie and Lena to clean her up. She was always so insolent, always mouthing-off, ready for a beating and a rough fuck, always taunting him, even when he implored, _why can’t you learn, you stupid girl_? Even after he killed Lena, she was still contemptuous, just daring him to off her too.

Alice was so pliable, so hungry in those moments. Was it love or taking advantage or something else entirely? She tries to banish those memories, that damp cellar, that other dead girl. She slips her hand inside Alice’s panties again, and is pleased when she finds her even wetter than when she left her.

Alice makes a keening, waif-like sound, too similar to how she sounded in the past, so Sophie kisses her way down Alice’s neck until she finds a tender, fleshy place she can close her mouth around and sink her teeth in until she hears Alice cry out.

Sophie drives her fingers up inside her, feels Alice clench, slippery where she rubs her on the outside. “Why won’t you let me touch you?” Alice whines, close to the edge, muddled and mostly rambling, but she knows what it’s like to be touched when you don’t want it, so of course she just keeps her hands on Sophie’s back, nails digging into the wool of her jumper.

“It’s okay,” Sophie murmurs into the shell of Alice’s ear, and takes her clit between her thumb and first two fingers and pinches, “You can come.” The way she says it, like she really missed her, like they’re back where this all started, except they’re not, they’re out in the world, this one thing they’d always dreamed of, and still it’s always been her, always been Sophie, her mouth, her hands, her docile body.

Alice comes around Sophie’s hand with a pathetic sob, thrusting back against her, desperate for more. She shudders, slumping towards Sophie, her hand still inside her underwear, slightly horrible, what with her family just downstairs, this thing that wasn’t supposed to ever happen again, and now her come is soaking through her panties, leaving a wet spot on the crotch of her linen pants. Sophie finally removes her hand, an aftershock shooting through Alice at the delicious chafe.

Sophie tastes her off her fingers then presses them up to Alice’s lips. She complies, sucking on the three fingers which were just inside her. She can’t really tell, but she wonders if she tastes better now, less afraid, less of the underground, less like an unsprouted seed left to die in the dark.

Sophie sees the turmoil brewing behind her eyes and comes up on her knees so that she can reach Alice’s face with her mouth and kisses each of her eyelids, then down her cheeks and to her mouth.

“Don’t leave me,” she says breathlessly, teeth scraping against Alice’s, all fight again, like she can’t get enough of the hurt.

* * *

“I tried to throw myself off a cliff.” Sophie almost looks happy, remembering the edge, the sweet taste of choice, of finally being able to fly and be free, free, free. Why didn’t she do it? So many times they’d tried, a paperclip, vomiting up a bottle of prenatal vitamins, Alice screaming at her, trying to make her strangle her, _please, please, please_.

Alice just stares back blankly, half post-orgasmic stupor, half denial. She can’t believe it’s been so long since that day in the woods, finally free, except at what cost, her father, Lena, her own life too. The days have bled into each other. The funeral, moving back to England, “a fresh start,” her mother had said.

But how could she start again when everything was the past. The sleepless nights, him looming over her, putting his hands on her, _be a good girl_ , blood everywhere, not sure if she was miscarrying or just dying, rolling up Lena’s body in a dirty carpet, far away, dissociating, but also right there in that godforsaken basement where every bad thing had happened. 

Alice wraps her arm around Sophie, hand resting on her exposed shoulder, warm, another body who was there too.

* * *

They go to Germany together to visit Lena’s grave.

It’s not peace.

* * *

Her mother doesn’t want her to see Sophie anymore.

“Please, Alice. It’s not good for you. Or her.” She looks so kind when she says it, so maternal, as if her daughter wasn’t taken from her for a decade, wasn’t locked away like an animal, didn’t come back another person.

Alice suddenly feels very cruel towards her.

“You have no idea what it was like,” and she’s yelling now, like she’d expect her to know, like she’d ever want anyone to go through what she did. “She was the only one. And him,” she adds spitefully, wanting to put the pictures in her head.

She can feel his breath on her neck, the hairs standing up straight, gun to her head, hand between her legs, fear cresting over her in a wave.

 _Why won’t he let her go_?

* * *

She meets Sophie at the station. No one bats an eye. No one recognizes them. Eleven-years-old forever in the mind’s eye of the public. Arrested in girlhood, liminal death.

Sophie’s left Lucy with her father again. She’s her daughter but also half him. How could she let that destroy the one good thing in her life? And yet here she is, running away from her family, towards Alice, towards the one person who was there through it all. Who dried her tears, wiped the blood from her baby when she was born, wrapped the afterbirth in newspaper and fought him off when he tried to touch her when she wasn't healed yet.

Sophie greets Gemma and Matthew stiffly. Neither of them look pleased. And why should they, after she pretended to be Alice, put them through hell for years thinking she was dead? She knows they wish Alice would stop inviting her around.

How can she explain to them that when they were in that place together—with him—and Lena, the only thing that kept her from completely losing her mind was being with her?

Alice leads her up to the bedroom. It’s different to the one in Eckhausen. No stars on the ceiling, no photos of her family. Just sterile, bone white walls, like the inside of a hospital, a calendar by the window, the shades drawn—eleven years, and now this interminable forever.

* * *

They don’t talk about it. Not really. But Alice brings Sophie’s wrist up to her mouth and kisses the spider’s web there.

She remembers Lena, the same tattoo, except she messed up a little, the outer webbing not quite the same pattern as hers. She remembers how pale she looked, her dead body, how small, wishing it had been her instead.

They don’t use the words the police use. Not kidnapping, not rape, not murder. Just touch each other with gentle hands, soft mouths.

He could have stopped them, she knows, but she thinks he liked to watch. It makes her stomach turn.

Her treacherous body, always ready for something, even if it was violence.

One time, starving for days, parched, crying, begging, then quiet, close to passing out, him coming down the ladder, and she knew what he wanted, and she would have done anything, and she did.

God, just thinking about it makes her feel dirty, sick.

Maybe he was just a man, and she was just a girl, so why can she taste bile in her mouth, why does she twitch when she thinks of him, why does she react like this? His pistol pressed up against her cunt, the safety disengaged, writhing, wanting more, wanting him.

She kisses Sophie again, hears Matthew slam the door downstairs as her mother calls after him.

Some days she wishes she never came back. Thinks about the cellar, the three of them, the world far away, just bodies, bodies, bodies.

* * *

Alice pulls off Sophie’s skirt, lets it pool on the floor and loops her forefinger into her underwear at the hip, tugs it off too, and leaves a fluttering kiss at the jut of her pubic bone.

“Can I touch you now?” she asks Sophie, already running her fingers up her legs, entranced as her skin erupts in goosebumps.

‘Yes,” Sophie replies, but it comes out on the tail end of a gasp, her eyes rolling back into her head as Alice’s hand finally reaches her sex, her first two fingers stroking down between her folds from her clit to her opening, lingering there where wetness is starting to pool.

“I miss you so much,” Alice hums, bringing her mouth to Sophie’s throbbing cunt, “every time you’re away.”

She darts her fingers across the insides of Sophie’s thighs, the tender flesh lighting with heat, squirming under her caress. She runs her tongue along the inner fold of her labia, both sides, feels the vibration of Sophie’s moans in her skull.

Every time they do this she thinks it’s a mistake, but with her head between Sophie’s legs, the desperation in the air, sugarplum sweet under her tongue, she can’t quite muster any regret.

Sophie threads her fingers through Alice’s hair, grinds herself into Alice’s face, hot, wanting, ever the bad, bad, bad girl.

Alice grazes over Sophie’s clit in tight circles, and the pleasure is a warm ball low in her belly. She’s already so close, just needs to be filled, the pressure and stretch of someone inside her.

“Please, _fuck me_ ,” she keens, grabbing for Alice’s hand, trying to make her.

Why is always like this, frenzied, close to violence? She thinks if they had met in another life, outside of that basement, away from him, then maybe they would have had a chance.

If its fate then it looks like this, Sophie rutting up against Alice’s mouth, Alice finally thrusting, one, then two fingers inside her, not gentle, not kind.

“I wish we never met.” Alice makes the shape of the words against Sophie’s clenching cunt, knows she doesn’t hear her as she closes her teeth around her clit, just the lightest nip, and feels her come, loud, expression contorting like she’s in pain, wet on Alice’s lips, in her mouth, on her chin.

Alice gropes between Sophie’s legs one last time, likes to watch the way she shudders, oversensitive.

“We can’t do this again,” Alice sighs, already knowing they will, gazing out the window at the vast open world she never asked to come back to.

“ _Mon amour_ ,” Sophie replies, not really listening, tangling her legs with Alice’s, studying her, brushing her hair out of her face, cupping her jaw gently, rubbing out some stray lip tint, soothing an old scar he gave her. “It’s only ever you.”

* * *

The therapist looks beyond displeased when Alice tells him about Sophie.

She doesn’t like that he’s a man, and she’s not sorry. During their last session, she fixes him with a glare and asks, “Do you like it when I tell you what he did to me? Does it turn you on? Does it make your cock hard?”

She doesn’t bother to close the door behind her when she leaves.

She walks the six miles home. Wishes a car would hit her.

Her mother is getting off the phone when she comes back to the house.

“Where were you?” but she doesn’t look angry, just worried, sad.

“ _You have no fucking idea what it was like_.” It’s uncalled for. She wants to hurt her.

“I got pregnant in there, did you know that?” Her mother’s face is pale, sunken. “Five times, I think, and I lost them all.”

“Alice—” her mother pleads, fighting tears.

“Sophie had it worse,” she pauses, trying to calm down, stars sparking at the corners of her vision, “that’s why she had Lucy. He made her keep it, even when she tried to throw herself down the stairs.”

The memories assail her. Why her? Why did he choose them? She feels the tattoo throb, every bad thing after that first mistake.

“Lena, she tried to starve herself so she couldn’t get pregnant. She was always fighting him like that. That’s why he—” She can’t finish the sentence, feels a rogue tear roll down her cheek, close to breaking into sobs.

Her mother’s crying now. She feels her wrap her into a tight embrace, but she’s above herself, watching a stranger in a strange house, a life she doesn’t recognize.

An image comes to her: Sophie stroking her hair after an especially bad beating, Lena cleaning her wounds.

Is it a dream or a memory?

* * *

Sophie lets Alice rub her cunt against hers, legs scissored together as she bites down on her shoulder, stifling her cries.

They come together. Sophie thinks it's trust. But maybe it’s just recklessness.

* * *

This time, Alice goes to France. She takes the Eurostar, watches the fields fly by, a blur, the Channel Tunnel, flower patches, trees.

The years she spent underground, and the earth was blooming above her.

Of course she’d fought with her mother again. “ _I’m not a child_!” As if she didn't know? When did she become like this?

Sophie’s flat is more homely than Alice’s bedroom. There are finger paintings taped to the walls and the refrigerator. Lucy’s beatific smile shines out of every framed photo on the mantel.

Sophie tells her a social worker comes every week. Her father lives a few blocks away. She doesn’t tell them where she goes when she leaves Lucy with him.

Lucy’s still in school. Sophie looks glum when she tells her the other children make fun of her French and her strange mannerisms. Who knew a girl raised like that could return to the world and still find it an inhospitable, lonely place?

“If you just love her, it’s enough,” Alice reassures, but even she doesn’t quite believe it. She’s known love, and what it can contort itself into.

He used to say it every time after he fucked her, “ _I love you_ ,” blood on her thighs, her body bruised all over.

She’d spit at his feet. Revel at the taste of blood in her mouth when he slapped her.

* * *

They don’t have sex. They just hold hands on the sofa, Sophie’s thumb running up and down the back of Alice’s hand, not reassuring, anxious.

“Is it like you thought it would be?” Alice asks, watching the bustling street, cyclists, vendors, swerving scooters.

“It never is, is it?” Sophie looks resigned, but not upset.

“Do you think we’ll ever be—” and Alice doesn’t have to finish the question, can’t really, because what does she wish they would be? Normal? Okay? Safe? Happy? It’s not that those things are out of reach. It’s just that she’s lived another life, knows what it’s like to be close to death, a place beyond human comportments, no words, just the memory that lives in her body, her bloodstream.

Sophie's eyes light, the first time in a long time. She reaches out, cups Alice’s jaw, that familiar, ever tender gesture.

She leans in for a kiss. It’s not fighting, not urgent, just her delicate, pliant mouth, the slope of Alice’s cheek pressed against hers, a breath that tastes like coming home.


End file.
